‘Painful’: Tortoise beats the hare as Oscar Piastri rues one that got away at Monza

“I’m not going to lie, it hurts a lot,” Piastri said to the host broadcast Sky in the aftermath of a dramatic race.

“We did a lot of things right today – there were a lot of question marks on the strategy going into the race.

“From the position we were in, with the tyres looking like they did, doing a one-stop [strategy] seemed like a very risky call and in the end it was right.

“[I was] very, very happy with the pace of the race that I managed to achieve – just when you finish second it hurts.”

Piastri made hay while the sun shone in the early going, gapping the field, including Leclerc and Norris.

But while he pitted twice as he felt the severe effects of “graining” – or tyre wear, Leclerc played the long game, pitting just once on lap 15 of the 53-lap race, and maintaining enough of an advantage to ultimately hold on for glory by just 2.664 seconds.

Norris crossed in third ahead of Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, and future Ferrari star and seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton in his Mercedes. A struggling Max Verstappen could only manage sixth, though he still maintains a strong points buffer in his hunt for a fourth-straight title.

Sky Sports pit-lane reporter Ted Kravitz said it best when analysing Piastri’s first-lap overtake of Norris.

“Lando might not have liked it, but it was a fairly clean pass,” he said of the fate of his fellow Brit.

Norris pitted on lap 14 to try and undercut Leclerc (to pit first and then use his better tyre condition to set a blistering time on his out-lap and come out in front), and it worked for a time, but Ferrari had the last laugh – making sure the Monégasque star’s first and only stop was on lap 15.

Piastri pitted from the lead on lap 16 and at the time held a 26-second advantage over his teammate back in sixth, but the Ferrari of Leclerc was right there. Hiding in plain sight – ready to creep away slowly from the crime scene without anyone suspecting a thing until it was too late.

While McLaren invoked “Papaya rules” (named after the famous colour of their cars) to remind Norris that he could race Piastri for the win, neither could ultimately catch Leclerc at the track that means most to the Ferrari faithful.

He was surprised by Piastri’s nerveless early overtake – one that McLaren team principal Andrea Stella later said the team would review – but admitted one stop wasn’t possible with his own tyres graining.

“Ferrari did a better job, they had a better car today – hats off to them,” Norris said.

“They did something with strategy we would not be able to achieve today.

“[And] well done to him (Oscar) – he did a good job, he got past me, and he deserved it.”

Norris later questioned when speaking to reporters whether Piastri went too close to the limit in overtaking him so early and the nature of the manoeuvre in the chicane, but added: “We both clearly suffered a lot more than the Ferrari and there was not a lot we could do at the time.

“If we could go back and review things and change some things, maybe we could have prepared even more for it, but we knew our limitations – we knew what to expect – [and] I feel like we still maximised today. We just couldn’t quite have what the Ferrari had.”

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